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I am using these instructions in an attempt to copy from one external drive to a new one. When I type the first command in terminal, I get a "permission denied" message.Any ideas?

I went and burned a new CD using gparted-live-0.4.6-1.iso instead of the newer version (0.6.4-1) I originally tried... now it is working. I also used a regular CD-R instead of a CD-RW, but most likely it was the gparted version that made the difference.

You are set if that is all you want to do. I got greedy and decided to try and copy all my programs from my HR20-700

2) my Linux box is scsi, so I downloaded Gnome partition manager to my SATA windows computer. Actually first I installed an old version of Linux to my SATA box (RH 7.3) but it wouldn't work because of syncing disks post BIOS. Then I tried the latest version of gparted which didn't work either (not sure why, I had to sudo everything and it still failed on xfsdump | xfsrestore)

(depending on your configuration, (I think I had sata 0 Windows, Sata 1 New, Sata 2 Old... run fdisk -l or use the gparted gui to know for sure))

5) xfsdump -J - /mnt/old | xfsrestore -J - /mnt/new

I did this 3 times in total and it took exactly 121 minutes each time on 'my system'

6) unmount hdds and remove

Lessons learned:

1) worked great for upgrading HR20-700, from HR20-700
2) No need to resize third partition, it is automatic
3) problems migrating from HR20-700 to HR24-500

a) at first I opened List and saw all my old programs plus the free space was commensurate with the upgrade and I thought everything was perfect... however, I can't play certain (most) programs. I get a black screen and nothing.. & need to reboot system
c) merging programs was not an issue as I at one point recorded a 1 hour HD before the upgrade and I can still view that, and it was merged flawlessly with old material
d) I left it on for a day and it recorded all the shows I normally record daily which I could play no problem
e) most of my recorded programs, however will not play, and freeze up the system. I thought maybe it was a Mp2/Mp4 thing however that is not the case, because
f) I can view 1 program of a series from before the upgrade - from 1 week ago, but the other episodes from >1 week ago are unviewable

I can't imagine this is the problem, probably coincidence, but I am still trying to pinpoint the exact problem.

Also, I was able to copy my HR20-700 (~270 GB) to a linux partition and then back to another (Directv formatted) HDD and worked fine in the (same) HR20-700. I just have problems trying to migrate to the HR24.

I'd like to make sure I understand post 1 correctly. Starting with "Step1" and ending with "Step5", those appear to be instructions to copy the data from an internal drive to an esata drive and to get it up and running as an esata drive.

I have one change to make, because I am replacing an existing esata drive. Can I just substitute the existing esata drive at "Step 3.b" for the the internal drive. Then I would use gparted to copy from the old esata to the new esata.

Does that make sense? I don't plan on opening the the receiver at all. Once I've copied the data to the new drive, I would just install it as the new esata drive.

Also I notice that 0.5.1-1 does not work and 0.4.6-1 is the recommended release for gparted. However there are later releases. Is 0.4.6-1 still the recommended release?

Yes, you can.Just remember - there is no eSATA drive; only eSATA cables/socket. All those drives are SATA drives.

Ok, thanks. So the internal drive doesn't look any different to the receiver than the external drive? For instance, could I take my existing external drive and install it internally? I wouldn't do that since it's getting ready to fail, just speaking in theory.

I'm having problems. I've formatted the new drive in my hr20 and now hooked them up to my computer. New is sata0 and old is sata1. I'm using gparted 0.4.6-1. I boot up my PC and go into gparted and verify the drives are hooked up like I expect.

I double click on the terminal window to get a command line prompt. I enter the two mkdir commands and those appear to work.

I enter the first mount command and it apparently doesn't work. I get a bunch of information which I don't understand. I'm not conversant with linux. Any pointers you can give me?

Those extra spaces fixed that problem. I even noticed there was a space between the /sda2/ and the /mnat/fap on both lines.

The restore went along, but didn't run long. I started getting these messages:
WARNING: could not open regular file ino 112616 mode 0x000081ed: Input/output error:not dumped

And I got a bunch of them, the copy only ran a short time on a 70% full 1TB disk. I just booted up the new HD in the HR20 and it is empty. I have tried booting up the old HD in the HR20 and it is not being recognized.

Attention all Linux programmers: Please help. Everything was going so good until----

I am trying to replace a 1 TB external drive with a 2 TB external drive.

One Linux command was hard for me to read correctly. After error messages I found that xfsdump(sp)-j(sp)-(sp)/mnt etc to work.

I was very careful. I did not reverse the sda & sdb. I hooked the old drive back up to the receiver and everything was there.

The first thing that went different from the script was that I did not get the "Formating storage device. Please wait" screen. After the system came back up the list screen said "no programs available" & 100% available. The external hard drive that I bought was pre-formatted in Fat32.

After the xfsdump command everything was going as scripted. The line said "restoring non-directory files". I was almost there. But then:

After this I booted up into windows and looked at the external 2 TB Toshiba eSATA/USB hard drive with a partitioning program. At the front of the disk there is an 11 GB partition that cannot be addressed, deleted or formatted. It must contain some Toshiba proprietary software for use with windows. I wonder if this could be causing the problem. If so is there a linux command that would reformat the entire drive so that I could have the receiver format it for DirecTV? Or is the only option to trade it in for a different HD?

I appreciate any help you can give me. Thank you.

I've gone thru this thread and found that this post reflects what happened to me. My question is to what drive are these error messages referring? I had assumed my original esata drive which contains all the programming I want to copy over. Is that correct?

Second, what would happen if I forgot to do the unmount on both drives? I feel so stupid, but I can't remember doing that step?

Third, would I be better off getting the latest gparted? Any chance the problem is related to using 0.4.6-1? I'm thinking not.

I have no clue why the HR20 won't recognize the original drive, since it is hard to screw up the original drive using this procedure. Even trying to copy your blank new drive onto your full old drive won't erase the existing recodings. Are you sure you have the old drive connected and powered up before trying to start the Hr20?1. Do you have the same Toshiba drive he did? If so, that may be part of the problem. If not, just trying deleting the partitions from the new drive starting over by having the HR20 repartition the drive. 2. Not a big deal if you forgot.3. 0.4.6-1 is fine, I would even say preferred at this time. See this post:http://www.dbstalk.c...457#post2585457

I just tried the copy procedure again and got the same results. When I put the new drive into the HR20, it will recognize my new drive but there are no recorded programs on it, which is to be expected.

My old drive was getting flaky and it may have failed during the procedure, but I kind of doubt it.

BTW, those error messages I listed just above? To which drive is it referring? I'm presuming the old drive, the new drive shouldn't be causing any errors?

I have no clue why the HR20 won't recognize the original drive, since it is hard to screw up the original drive using this procedure. Even trying to copy your blank new drive onto your full old drive won't erase the existing recodings. Are you sure you have the old drive connected and powered up before trying to start the Hr20?1. Do you have the same Toshiba drive he did? If so, that may be part of the problem. If not, just trying deleting the partitions from the new drive starting over by having the HR20 repartition the drive. 2. Not a big deal if you forgot.3. 0.4.6-1 is fine, I would even say preferred at this time. See this post:http://www.dbstalk.c...457#post2585457

1. No, it's a seagate.2. This last time (when it failed again) I did do the unmount.

I just booted up the receiver with the old (seagate) and it recognized it and the programming is there. This is frustrating that I can't copy the files.

I think tomorrow I will switch the esata cables (which means the new will be b and the old a) just to see if that helps. I noted in the thread some problems were fixed by switching cables.

Since the new drive is recognized by the receiver, and it's empty, wouldn't that mean it's ready for the copy? I've never gotten the superblock error.

Since the new drive is recognized by the receiver, and it's empty, wouldn't that mean it's ready for the copy? I've never gotten the superblock error.

Dump errors relate to the old drive. How many seconds have elapsed when it finishes? If it is restoring at all, I wouldn't necessarily suspect the cables. Next time boot the computer with a thumb drive attached, and when the procedure has finished copy the screen output into a text file, then post it here. The superblock error results from not doing a graceful shutdown. You can still get errors (non-fatal) if you try to restore onto a drive where the restore process has been previously aborted. Just delete the partitions on the new drive to make sure you are starting from scratch.

Dump errors relate to the old drive. How many seconds have elapsed when it finishes? If it is restoring at all, I wouldn't necessarily suspect the cables. Next time boot the computer with a thumb drive attached, and when the procedure has finished copy the screen output into a text file, then post it here. The superblock error results from not doing a graceful shutdown. You can still get errors (non-fatal) if you try to restore onto a drive where the restore process has been previously aborted. Just delete the partitions on the new drive to make sure you are starting from scratch.

I used my iphone to take a pic of the last one, it was 843 seconds and the previous failed copy was close to that.

You are saying to have a usb drive attached when I boot into gparted? Is there a way copy and paste in gparted?

Do I use gparted to delete the partitions. If I remember, there were about 3 of them. After doing that, I'd need to have the HR20 format it again, wouldn't I?